


i am learning this slowly

by notquiteaghost



Series: the circle never breaks [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gavroche!centric, Gen, Reincarnation, Second person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquiteaghost/pseuds/notquiteaghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>When the bullets come, you are not even surprised. You're vaguely annoyed you don't live to see the end, but you aren't surprised. You welcome Death like an old friend, and feel the tug at your throat like a leash, and so it begins.</em>
</p><p>A study in Gavroche, reincarnation and a love affair with France.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am learning this slowly

**Author's Note:**

> so this was actually really fun? and also the direct result of someone calling me out on three lines i wrote as a frigging joke - "i miss france." "france killed you." "yeah, and it still loved me best." - and i might end up doing more of these, centred around other characters. i have a lot of feels about this 'verse.
> 
> title is from '[i sing the body electric, especially when my power goes out](http://youtu.be/HGwlMAlH2iM)' by andrea gibson. not entirely a gavroche poem, but certain parts ("my hands are busy on the wrong things. some days, i call my arms wings while my head is in the clouds, it will take me a few more years to learn flying is not pushing away the ground. safety is not always safe, you can find one on every gun. i am aiming to do better.") are incredibly applicable.

The first time, you have resigned yourself to death before you even really know what death means. You are going to die for your country and she will mourn but no one else will even notice. One less mouth to feed, that's all you are.

When the bullets come, you are not even surprised. You're vaguely annoyed you don't live to see the end, but you aren't surprised. You welcome Death like an old friend, and feel the tug at your throat like a leash, and so it begins.

The third time, you are not in France but you can still feel her rushing through your veins, you are not a part of the revolution but you can still feel it rushing through your veins, you tear open your veins and spill your blood all over the floor and you are still not surprised.

The fifth time, you are still not in France and you are slightly better off, but you still wear poverty like a lover's jacket, you still exist primarily in back alleys, broken locks and borderline lawlessness, you are still going to die.

You are always going to die. You know this. The game is not where, when, how, why; the game is whether or not you stay that way, whether or not you slip through Death's grasp just like you slip through morality's, your parents', France's. The game is the end, and you are not playing to win, you are playing for lack of anything else to do.

The sixth time, you are alone. No sister, no Apollo, no friends. Just deadbeat parents, long forgotten revolution, Paris decaying as you watch, and a death sentence you wear like a crown.

You are not surprised.

-

France buys you flowers, and then doesn't call.

France slow dances with you, kisses you senseless, lends you her jacket, and then doesn't call. France winds her fingers through your hair, your heart, your veins, in you and through you and more like poison ivy than a country, and then doesn't call.

France gets you killed. France doesn't call.

-

Sometimes you wonder about fate, about circumstance, about the choices you make and the choices that make you, about control and direction and the tug at your throat.

If everything you do is pre-determined, then that would explain why you are never surprised, why France never cries if or when you leave, why you feel like everything you do has already been done so much better by someone else.

You wonder who's making the choices. Who's pulling the strings.

Maybe it's France. That would explain the love affair, the slow dance, the jacket.

Maybe France is another puppet. That would still explain the jacket.

You will probably never know for sure. You know far too much as it is, about the space between Death's fingertips and Life's skin, about the sound of a promise breaking, about the changing motion of history, about the dance steps you have never been taught but are incapable of forgetting regardless.

France doesn't call. You don't return her jacket. Death greets you like an old friend. You are not surprised.

You are not surprised.

-

There is always you, you and your sister and your deadbeat parents, same sister but never the same parents, not that it matters, not that it makes any difference, the faces change but the neglect tastes the same.

Rules do not sit well on you. You and legality are not compatible.

Everywhere you go, there will always be dark alleys and incompetent locks and a lower class to play martyr for.

There is always you, there is always this, everywhere, everywhen, it all tastes the same.

-

France is crumbling around you and you are trying to calm her down and she is not listening, she is not listening, you would offer her your bones as a replacement for her shaky foundations and she knows this and still she crumbles.

You spill your blood on her streets. She wraps poverty around you like a jacket, and you are grateful for a keepsake. You are grateful for all of the wrong reasons.

France is in your blood, you have spilled your blood for her, you have come and gone and come and gone and you are built into her very foundations, and she knows this, she is grateful, you love her and she drapes a jacket over your shoulders and everything is crumbling as you watch, but you don't mind, you're used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> i am [here](http://idoubtthereforeimightbe.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
